The Conversations: Nashville

The Conversations is a House feature in which Jason Bellamy and Ed Howard discuss a wide range of cinematic subjects: critical analyses of films, filmmaker overviews, and more. Readers should expect to encounter spoilers.

Ed Howard: Robert Altman’s Nashville is one of those rare films that feels more timely, more relevant, the more time goes by. When Altman filmed this multi-character study, set during a few days in the United States’ country music capital, the nation was in the midst of preparations for America’s bicentennial, a celebration of the country’s heritage and culture. It was 1975. It had been twelve years since John F. Kennedy was shot and seven years since Robert Kennedy was shot, and both events still loomed large, over the country and over Altman’s film. Richard Nixon had just resigned, too, further shattering whatever naïve hopes about politics might still have been lingering anywhere. The film opens, after a breathless parody of TV hucksterism, with a roving campaign van advertising for fictional presidential candidate Hal Phillip Walker. Throughout the film, this campaign emits a steady stream of populist rhetoric, mixing genuine political reforms (taxing churches, eliminating farm subsidies) with outright absurdities (kicking all the lawyers out of Congress, rewriting the National Anthem to something “people can understand”). Altman follows this introduction with Haven Hamilton (Henry Gibson) singing the kind of über-patriotic tune that Walker might have in mind, an unthinking ode to American virtue: “we must be doing something right / to last 200 years.”

What could be a better way to start a film that chronicles the values and ideas of America, both as it really is and as its people like to imagine it? And what could be a better place to start our conversation about this sprawling, iconic movie? Nashville is often thought of as a musical, a showcase for all the country songs and the singers who appear as characters, and it’s also thought of as one of Altman’s typical network narratives, where the stories of a large cast of characters interlock and intersect across a few days in a single location. Both of those descriptions are true. But Nashville is also a profoundly political movie, a movie haunted by the ghosts of then-recent political assassinations. Its resonances have only grown more potent and pronounced as the years have passed. It depicts the manipulations of image that go on in both entertainment and politics, and the ways in which supposedly populist candidates marshal power by appealing broadly to “the people” and copping anti-government attitudes.

The ironical political commentary at the film’s core has thus only become more and more prescient and insightful in the three decades since Nashville’s release. For Altman, his vision of America was always tangled up with media, entertainment and political grandstanding, concepts that for him are as American as apple pie. Altman’s actual bicentennial film, Buffalo Bill and the Indians, is similarly all about the mythmaking and exploitation of entertainment that are at the root of all power in American culture. In the modern era, surrounded by infotainment and political campaigns that are increasingly remote from reality, Altman’s satire seems truer than ever. The film is something of a time capsule, a portrait of the national mood at a particular time and place, but Nashville arguably says as much about our country today as it does about America in the ’70s.

Jason Bellamy: That’s an interesting argument. “Prescient” might indeed be a word to apply to Nashville, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say that it’s “timely.” Quite the opposite, actually. Nashville is indeed a “time capsule, a portrait of the national mood at a particular time and place.” That’s perfectly stated. To suggest it is timely is to suggest this fictionalized world resembles our own, and I don’t think it does. It just points in this direction, hints at what’s next. I don’t want to send us on too distant a tangent here, but America today is worried about threats from outside, not threats from within. We are an increasingly cynical culture and an increasingly divided one, despite all the ways that technology has lumped us together. I mean, who sings the anthem that “we must be doing something right” anymore, even at those times when it’s true? Who ignores the political rhetoric of the Hal Phillip Walkers anymore, letting it drift through the ether? Who seeks to find fame with talent anymore? Who struggles to find a stage to be heard anymore? Nashville absolutely captures some of the emotion and tenor of its time. But the emotions and tenor of these times? I don’t see it.

There’s a quaintness to Nashville that I have a hard time applying to America 35 years later. There’s an earnestness to these characters that reminds me of simpler times. It seems to me that right now America is at war with itself. We begin this conversation in the aftermath of Scott Brown’s historically significant win in Massachusetts, which looks as if it will deny the key first-term objective of a president whose monumental election came only a year before. The repeated message of the past few years seems to be that America doesn’t know what it wants to become, it only wants to stop being what it is. If there is this kind of tension running through Nashville, I admit that I fail to detect it.

EH: See, for me, the dominant strain running through Nashville is exactly what you refer to in regards to today’s political climate: this conflict between idealism and cynicism, between the earnest hopes of these characters and their increasing resignation to the sad realities they have to settle for. I don’t want to make too much of these parallels between this 35-year-old film and a future it couldn’t possibly have predicted, but I guess what I’m saying is that Altman’s political satire is hardly “quaint,” by any means.

Indeed, I see our modern society in numerous moments and threads running through the film. There’s the inconsistency and shallowness of political engagement, ranging from the tireless cheerleading of Walker’s young campaigners (who at one point even paste campaign stickers on two cars that have just crashed into each other) to the disaffection of folk singer Tom (Keith Carradine), who doesn’t “vote for nobody for president.” There’s the Vietnam vet (Scott Glenn) who wanders through the film with haunted eyes, confronted with disinterest and disdain at every turn. There’s the naked cynicism of Walker’s campaign manager Triplette (Michael Murphy), whose manipulation and two-faced dealings are a stark contrast to the supposed idealism and populism of Walker’s campaign and the fresh-faced youths he surrounds himself with.

At the heart of the film’s political message is disillusionment and the destruction of ideals: The film’s icon of innocence and smiling purity, Barbara Jean (Ronee Blakley), is literally destroyed, and many of the other characters encounter metaphorical destructions in various guises. The would-be star Sueleen (Gwen Welles) comes face to face with the depressing end result of her doomed do-anything quest for fame; she sacrifices her integrity and in her blank expression during the final scene, she realizes that it was for naught. Mr. Green (Keenan Wynn) loses his wife and realizes that no one seems to care or even notice. Far from being reminded of “simpler times,” I see this as a very cynical film, a film about corruption in its multitude of forms. It’s filled with distasteful characters, from Barbara Jean’s sleazy husband Barnett (Allen Garfield), who only cares about making money off of her career, even at the expense of her health, to the BBC documentarian Opal (Geraldine Chaplin), a blatant starfucker who will do anything to be close to the top, and who gets perhaps the best of many hilarious tossed-off lines when she tells Tom’s limo driver that she doesn’t “gossip with servants.” That’s without even mentioning the ways in which so many characters—Tom, Opal, casually trampy beanpole L.A. Joan (Shelley Duvall)—treat sexuality as a game to get what they want.

Arguably, only Albuquerque (Barbara Harris) really achieves her dream of a spotlight of her own, although that moment, the film’s finale, can best be described as a perfect example of “careful what you wish for.” Is this really earnestness and a lack of cynicism? Is this a portrait of a society less divided than our own, or a portrait of a society that upholds a threadbare illusion of unity and patriotism while beneath the surface it’s every bit as fragmented, self-absorbed and conflicted as our own?

JB: “Every bit as fragmented”? I don’t think so. But I see your point. Perhaps the key difference for me is that I detect an almost universal anger in American society today that I don’t see in Nashville. Hal Phillip Walker rants against everything, and yet the world around him is deaf to his anger. Indeed, even his campaigners seem indifferent to his messages. They just want to put on a good show. This is in stark contrast to what we saw in the last presidential election, for example, in which there were varying levels of “issue” comprehension among Americans but there was no shortage of passion or political identification. Sure, Scott Glenn’s Vietnam vet “wanders through the film with haunted eyes,” but do we really get any indication that he’s haunted by his wartime experiences? Or do we just assume that all men in uniform are the same? Opal makes that assumption, and the film uses it as yet another example of her foreign ignorance, the way she treats America like it’s Disneyland, so that a solider in uniform is as much a mascot as a teenager in a Mickey Mouse costume. And sure, Tom, the long-haired, free-loving folk singer, says he can’t vote for anyone and shows disdain for Glenn’s soldier. But do you detect any actual fervor in those comments, or are they just signs of a man who has bought into his own image? Heck, even Barbara Jean’s assassin doesn’t seem particularly upset about anything. He’s just mentally defective, eventually snapping at the sight of the American flag as if he’d spotted the Queen of Hearts in The Manchurian Candidate. As Manny Farber observed, these are “single note stereotypes.”

I don’t want to give the impression that these characters aren’t interesting. And I agree that this is a cynical film that is about corruption, in many ways. But Nashville still seems quaint to me, and, despite the unrelenting din of Hal Phillip Walker’s testimonials, I’m not sure this film is as explicitly political as we’ve made it sound to this point. If all the songs in Nashville were performed on behalf of Walker’s campaign, as endorsements of his proposals for change, why, yes, then this would feel timely. Under that structure, the assassination of Barbara Jean would be the buzzkill (akin to Scott Brown’s election?) exposing the naïveté of moments like 2009’s inauguration concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial—an event just over a year old that already seems quaint in its hopefulness for change and its belief that change was imminent. But Barbara Jean doesn’t sing on behalf of Walker. She’s completely ignorant of him and his politics. Today that would be impossible. In fact, today many artists seem as desperate to align themselves with politicians as politicians are eager to align themselves with artists. So, yes, Nashville’s depiction of self-absorption is certainly applicable to modern America. And Opal’s attention-span-challenged way of dealing with people is a perfect illustration of the Twitterverse, where even at 140 characters people do a whole lot more talking than listening, in my observation. But I think that’s where the timeliness mostly ends.

EH: Fair enough. As I said, I don’t want to overstress this point, and you’re right that Nashville doesn’t map exactly onto our current political situation, by any means. I never meant to suggest that it did; only that its themes and ideas remain resonant beyond their immediate “time capsule” context. What’s especially resonant in the film is the underlying uneasiness about American values and what it means to be American. You suggested that Haven Hamilton’s opening song—“we must be doing something right/ to last 200 years”—delivers a naïve sentiment that would be unimaginable today (outside of Fox News, no?). I would submit that not only was it also naïve in 1975, but that Haven is aware of the song’s naïveté, that he has his own internal doubts and insecurities about what he’s singing. Throughout that opening sequence, as the credits roll along the bottom of the screen, Altman’s camera patiently zooms in and out, mostly homing in on Haven’s face, capturing the uneasy expression in his eyes as he sings this patriotic ballad. His eyes shift from side to side, reflecting a note of nervousness beneath the song’s triumphant chorus, as though he’s fully aware of how absurd and vacant these words will seem to many people who don’t share this rosy view of America’s innate goodness. More than that, there’s a hint of fear in his face, as though he’s not quite so sure that America is in such good shape after all. By subtly undercutting the lyrics in this way, Altman turns Haven’s refrain from a forceful statement of American supremacy into a hesitant question: We must be doing something right, right?

Haven’s song, like so many others in the film, is intended as a cover-up, a gloss on more complicated ideas that no one wants to deal with or think about. Later in the film, Haven sings a rousing anthem called “Keep A’ Goin,” an ode to ignorance that advises people to deal with adversity by simply moving on, never stopping to think, as though all problems can be overcome by ignoring them: a message that might’ve been the theme song of the Bush years. Tellingly, Haven says it’s the song that made him a star; people love blind optimism. One dominant trope of the music in Nashville is that so few of these songs really mean what they say; there’s an ironic disconnect between reality and the fictions of music. In song after song, these characters dodge their true feelings and the true state of the world, offering up platitudes, not only about politics, but about romance, race and family values as well. (Haven’s ode to maintaining a marriage “for the sake of the children” is especially hilarious in light of his own apparent separation/divorce from his wife and public affair with another woman.)

The finale is probably the best example of all, as Albuquerque begins passionately singing “It Don’t Worry Me” at precisely the moment when, in fact, everyone should be worried, should be shaken by what has just happened. An American icon was just assassinated, but it don’t worry you? The audience should be fiercely protesting this banality in the face of tragedy. Instead, the song soothes the crowd’s uneasy mood, restoring tranquility and willful ignorance; by the time the film ends, everyone’s smiling again, swaying in time to the music, singing along. They’re not worried. But it’s not the moment of communal celebration that it might appear to be; it’s a moment of collective forgetting, of this massed crowd choosing happiness over consciousness, putting on blinders rather than acknowledging the corruption and violence pervading their society. Entertainment, like Haven’s politically regressive oeuvre, is a balm, a way of keeping people docile and unquestioning.

JB: Now we’re on the same page. At least mostly. I don’t see the same depth in Haven’s opening recording studio scene. I take that more or less on face value. We’ve got a guy who sings country music, which tends to be patriotic, and so he sings a patriotic song. I don’t detect a lot of thought or angst about the material. Haven strikes me as a professional making his living. A country music artist probably wouldn’t get very far tearing down America, just as it’s hard for a country music artist to get very far without wearing a cowboy hat—unless, of course, he makes up for it with an Elvis-like jumpsuit and a serious pair of sideburns. No question, Haven is obsessed with his image. Even his reaction to Barbara Jean’s assassination is image-based. “This isn’t Dallas!” he protests. “It’s Nashville!” He’s less concerned with the shooting of country music’s biggest star, the women whose return from supposed treatment at a burn center he used as an opportunity for a photo-op, than he is with the damage to Nashville’s reputation. If the illusion of Nashville dies, Haven’s status as an icon will die with it.

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This thread (which I loved) is years old, but Karen Black just died and it's led me to yet one more reflection on this film, which has burrowed deeper into my psyche as I've grown older. I tend to obsess over the movie for about a month each summer. I'm probably one of the few people who actually BOUGHT the soundtrack, and I did so not because it is good music, but because it makes me smile in the same way that most Altman films do. Connie White's songs are so incredibly inane and her sweet behavior so forced that she becomes one of the films attractive antagonists with such an incredible economy of words. Instead of being bored by her songs, I find that I can't keep my eyes off of her in the same way that one can't help watching a train wreck. Her song Memphis is a portrait of just how clueless she is.

I feel the same about Haven's songs. Even the line "we must be doing something right to have lasted 200 years" is laughable. For all of the bicentennial hype, 200 years is such a drop in the bucket compared to any other developed country or past civilization on the planet. It doesn't take much to last 200 years. Who KNOWS what we've done right after only 200 years? "Keep-a Goin" flies in the face of science with the line "the doctor is just a human, too." "For the Sake of the Children" is a rejection of every traditional marriage value that has been touted over the last several years.

These are not knee-slapping lines. They are quiet humor, and I think they work so well in Nashville because they are also very much in the tradition of subtle Southern humor that you would find in traditional works such as Tobacco Road or The Moviegoer.

Like many great works of art, I will keep considering Nashville and finding new layers of relevance to my own life.

Posted by yorts1 on 2013-08-09 01:13:22

Thanks for the comment, Steven. Ed and I love to see the discussion continue.
You write: "the chief purpose of talking about threats (real or imagined) from outside our borders has always been the manipulation of opinion within our borders." I wouldn't disagree with that. However, whenever there is a foreign threat I think the rhetoric takes on a bit of a different feel--it's the difference between "the problem is them" (them vs us) and "the problem is us." Of course, to make the latter argument, a "them" is always created.
My point wasn't to suggest that there's nothing timely about Nashville. Far from it. But when I watch it, it feels a bit quaint, making me long for simpler times, simpler enemies, not to mention fewer enemies (perceived and/or real) and fewer Walker-type voices. That's why it feels like more of a time capsule to me than a thing of the here and now. But I certainly understand your take (and Ed's).
If Altman and his cast wanted to cock their legs over that idea, more power to them.
Well said.Posted by Jason Bellamy on 2010-03-10 17:05:28

Great conversation, by the way. Pardon me for not saying that sooner.Posted by Anonymous on 2010-03-10 15:17:40

"America today is worried about threats from outside, not threats from within." Jason, the chief purpose of talking about threats (real or imagined) from outside our borders has always been the manipulation of opinion within our borders. For that reason, I think the incoherent slurry of populism and nonsense in Walker's political messages correlates perfectly with our current situation, in which cynical clowns like Glenn Beck use populist rhetoric to redirect public anger over the awful mess created by conservative notions of how the world works. "Nashville" still seems quite timely to me.
As someone with very little taste for country music, I find the film's songs to be limp in very believable ways. Listen to a bona fide country music superstar like Tim McGraw sing "Don't Take the Girl" and tell me that tune wouldn't sound right at home on the "Nashville" soundtrack. At the time "Nashville" was released, the battle lines of the culture wars were already firmly in place, and country music was presented as the real, authentic voice of America. If Altman and his cast wanted to cock their legs over that idea, more power to them.Posted by Anonymous on 2010-03-10 15:16:05

Maybe I need to review the scene, but if the flag isn't what triggers the assassination, why doesn't Barbara Jean's singing put him over the edge before?
The first time Kenny hears Barbara Jean sing, he looks pretty close to the edge to me. (Start at the 3:20 mark of the clip.) Or at least that's when the idea first seems to pop in his head. Then, at the Parthenon, when Barbara Jean starts to sing "My Idaho Home," he unlocks his violin case immediately following a verse about her family and how she feels sorry for those who grew up without one.
You are right though about something I missed: he does glance up at the billowing flag (an image that gives me chills every time I see it) about thirty seconds before opening fire. It is Altman's way of entwining politics with entertainment and assassination (five years before John Lennon's murder). Yet what registers with me is the artistic end of it: for Pvt. Kelly, Barbara Jean's music is a healing force; for Kenny, it's destructive.Posted by Craig Simpson on 2010-02-20 01:30:29

David & Craig: I just wanted to jump in and thank you for the excellent comments. Ed and I love to see the conversation continue, and you've certainly helped that. (I hope others jump in, too.)
Craig: Interesting reading of the final sing-a-long. Good stuff there. On the assassination though: Maybe I need to review the scene, but if the flag isn't what triggers the assassination, why doesn't Barbara Jean's singing put him over the edge before?Posted by Jason Bellamy on 2010-02-19 17:28:06

Another thought: I don't see the "Keep A Goin" theme as comparable to the policies of the Bush administration. Maybe I've just grown weary of that analogy, but I see it as more similar to Frank Deford's impassioned argument in the Sports Illustrated issue following 9/11 that the baseball season should not be suspended (for a few days or a week or however long it was), rather the games should go on. I see it as similar to how a friend responded to the Oklahoma City bombing: he and his wife were so depressed they put on a DVD of the musical Oklahoma! and sang along, until they felt a little better.
Clearly Altman has deep misgivings about art (and music and cinema) that register at the end of Nashville, but I don't think he's being entirely cynical or contemptuous. If he were, he wouldn't have been in the business he was in.Posted by Craig Simpson on 2010-02-18 13:51:18

I lived in Nashville for two years back in the late 80s, my high school about three blocks from the Parthenon. By that time I was already a cinephile and was eager to plunge into an acclaimed film based on my at-the-time place of residence, yet I didn't "get" Nashville or any other Altman movie until around my 30s. In my teens, watching this epically unconventional movie was a similar experience to how Steve Vineberg described his college undergrads: I "stared at it blankly, waiting for a clue to help crack the code." I wouldn't say exactly that Altman's films age well--there is a certain "time capsule" quality to them in general, and to Nashville in particular, as both of you stated. It's more like I'm finally aging well enough to appreciate them.
You guys do a good job with the sociopolitical context of this movie, but it's important to consider Nashville within the spectrum of Altman's body of work as well. Ray Sawhill's extraordinary piece for Salon about ten years ago describes Nashville as a type of movie "Altman has made over and over again--films whipped up out of nothing but how he makes movies." Sawhill hastens to add that most of these movies (citing Ready to Wear, Brewster McCloud, H.E.A.L.T.H.) were duds, Nashville being an exception. "There's an exultant quality to it," he writes, "as though the artist is glorying in his prowess, that can remind you of Picasso once he learned to cut loose with his own language." For me, too, this is why watching Nashville is an exhilarating experience.
Nashville is a sociological/observational film along the lines of Scorsese's Goodfellas or Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing in that it sacrifices depth of character for breadth of character. It's less interested in developing a traditional narrative than in depicting a distinctive cultural climate or lifestyle (though I would argue a structure is there, buried like roots beneath the surface). In the new Altman oral biography, Joan Tewkesbury says that she hit on the idea for the script after spending time in the city and realizing how circular it was, that you could bump into the same total stranger three times in the same day. Altman and his actors convey this sense of circularity beautifully through a near-perfect balance of uninhibited freedom of performance and tight thematic focus. Even a seemingly marginal character like Jeff Goldblum's biker serves a couple of crucial functions. On one level, he's a narrative red-herring, one of the three male loner-types who join the congregation at the Parthenon (along with Scott Glenn's Private Kelly and David Hayward's eventual assassin Kenny). On another level, he's there to underscore the point that Nashville is a city of outsiders, that nearly everybody there seems to be from somewhere else.
Jason essentially answered his own question bout how the lulls in the movie are used to heighten the "big" moments, but I want to add that Barbara Jean and Haven Hamilton's music--whatever its quality--plays into this at the climax. It isn't seeing the American flag, but Barbara Jean's songs about family that send Kenny over the edge (a moment foreshadowed at the earlier concert where he hears Barbara Jean, the first time we see a sign of trouble on his face). As for Haven Hamilton, it's perhaps inevitable to finally turn to Pauline Kael, who wrote: "Who watching (him) sing the evangelical `Keep a' Goin'... would guess that the song represented his true spirit, and that when injured he would think of the audience before himself?"
This is admittedly a less jaundiced take than how both of you interpret that scene, and I'm not suggesting you're wrong. (Indeed, you're making me rethink a moment I've always taken for granted.) Truth be told, I've always been troubled by the ending of Nashville, with the audience clapping and singing along to "It Don't Worry Me," and all the close-ups of children that bring the story to a close. (Suggesting what--that this is the country they're inheriting?) It's only Henry Gibson's conviction that even halfway sells for me what probably shouldn't have worked at all. Yet I think that's also the mysterious magic of this movie.Posted by Craig Simpson on 2010-02-18 02:13:22

Very interesting discussion, guys. I would say that America today has bought into the notion that its greatest dangers are from without, but everything indicates they're clearly from within. Do want to talk about how many death threats President Obama gets every single day? Nashville reflects the coming of the current—deeply poisoned—atmosphere.
The notion that performers today have any understanding about politics is belied at every turn and every utterance. They're all tools designed to guarantee a long-defeated left never rises again. Why strike out against the system when you can sing "We Are The World" instead and give to the telethon of your choice? Politics is something for "Celebrities" to dabble in, not ordinary people. That's the message we're hammered with relentlessly.
At the time of its release Altman was criticized for being contemptuous of country music. No intelligent person can be anything else but contemptuous of this con. Altman's coup de grace is that the "authenticity" of Barbara Jean is nothing more the theatricalization of her bi-polar insanity.
Barbara Harris, by the way, went on to play an even more eccentric singer in Hal Ashby's maudit masterpiece Second Hand Hearts.
These days she's living in Scottsdale Arizona where she teaches acting to the locals.Posted by David Ehrenstein on 2010-02-17 17:01:18